How Bloody High is Lower Loxley? ( and other Chicken stories)

Has  Graham Seed kicked the bucket 

The "special" 60th anniversary episode of the the radio soap The Archers had pain-in-the-arse Helen ( yes the queen of yogurt and everything smug) hurtling into a pre eclamptic crisis at the same time that posh Nigel Pargeter hurtled off the roof of his Stately Home - Lower Loxley.
I finally got to listen to the infamous episode this afternoon and couldn't quite get over the length of Nigel's scream  as he nose dived into the manicured lawn! How many stories does Lower Loxley has? 50?60?.........
It took an absolute AGE for the poor minor aristocrat to fade away!!!
(His fall was longer than Jennifer Jones' out of the scenic elevator in The Towering Inferno
I cannot wait to hear about his fate tonight! is he dead after his terrible extended fall? or will he be consigned to the mainstay of soap writers from all over the world and be left paralysed in a boneshaker nhs wheelchair?
We Will see!
If Nigel goes....the Archers will be all the poorer! As a character Nigel ( the actor Graham Seed) has always been a rather sweet foil for his odious politically correct wife Elizabeth ( who I dislike almost as much as I do the new mum Helen and the simpering Kathy Perks) and I will miss him and his little sayings(such as " Lizzie, do come and look at the meadow, it's heavenly.") a great deal.
The ARCHERS is and hopefully always will be a cracking and reassuringly English soap opera.
Of course the tale of life in the midland's farming village is as realistic as me wearing a smoking Jacket after dinner...but I dont really care.....I love it's very Daily Mail reader feel and middle class safety.......it's a constant in my life...........( and without it my regular, hour long conversations with fellow fan about very nuance of who did what to whom (he's also called Nigel by the way)........would also be greatly missed!

I have 10 new stalkers

Today is another bank holiday (ANOTHER?!!!!) and I am working a morning shift tomorrow which is a bloody nuisance as I start work at 7.30...an hour before the animals can be safely let out)
so today I cleaned out the coops, filled the feeders and water bowls so that everything has been done and dusted for Chris, who has agreed to go into his work slightly later.
My constant companions today have been the new rescue hens,The Belles of St Trinians. They have blossomed from skinny, Kate Moss type wrecks into a troupe of slightly unkempt but amiable young girls who obviously see me as a mommy meal ticket.
Everywhere I have gone, the ten chickens have followed, all clucking gently to themselves with a benign, friendly curiosity which I have found highly amusing...they are real sweeties!

Just Not Being Arsed

Tonight we had planned to drive to Llandudno to see the Colin Firth move The Kings Speech.
The weather has gotten just a little colder and as the dogs pilled up on the couch we lit the fire and decided to stay in yet again with a dvd like two old ladies.
Like most couples we just cannot agree on a film to watch for an evening in.
If Chris had his way, I could be subjected to anything from Carry on up the Khyber, Rosemary and bleeding Thyme or a re re re run of Indiana Jones and the temple of doom.
If I had my way, he would be subjected to a subtitled "arty" production, which would go down with him as fart would do in Church......so after a decade together, I have learnt to compromise
Early evening we sat through the "frothy" all-American caper film Salt ( with the non acting trout pout of Angeline Jolie) and later when Chris goes to bed I will settle down with the Korean movie mother


Constance sleeping through the movie with her head on my feet

 It's been a bit of a non day today.
We have not done anything interesting
Oh hang on...............
I have defrosted the freezer with the hair dryer,
cut a particularly nasty clingon from Meg''s bum
and spent a merry ten minutes trying to get an antibiotic tablet down a bad tempered hen's gullet!

and who says this blog can be boring

A Town Full Of Wheat

I felt a bit muzzy this morning but had no hangover!
The village was deserted and quiet so I took the dogs along London road for their first walk and it was nice to have a few moments of reflection.
Trelawnyd literally means Town of Wheat or Townful of wheat..It has an ancient history, dating back to the doomsday book, but it was the Trelawnyd born but Oxford Educated John Wynne who had a vision to develop a hamlet into something much bigger way back in the early 1700s!
He developed a school, a weekly market and minor industry in the village and had the Welsh village name changed (like you do) to the more "optimistic" Newmarket in the hope of developing the place into a market town proper. 
The village did develop but not to the extent that Wynne had envisioned. and in the 1950s the old name of Trelawnyd was reinstated.
This history has ingrained a certain identity to the place.
This morning in the mist and wet of an early New Year's Day, it was easy to recall the history of the village and to mentally reconstruct the likes of the village well (next to the pond), the Black Boy public house on High Street (apparently it had wonderful curved stone steps) and the shops and bakery along London Road.

I like living in the village. I like the fact that Mrs Hopkins gave me a pair of mittens after seeing me walk the dogs without any on. I like the fact that poultry Bob will stop and share an anecdote or 50 with me on Bron Haul and I like the fact that Auntie Glad will tie scones to the cottage door handle and that a silver foiled bara brith was left for us by Pat on the garden gate only two days ago
That's what village life is all about

My First Proper "drunk" post

This is a first in my blogging history!
I am writing this blog when perfectly PISSED (Its 1.00am)
(American readers will have to be aware that pissed means drunk and NOT angry!)- I have had around 7 very large gin and tonics and one mediocre sized glass of champagne!
We have been down to my sister's house for a quiet but relaxing New Year's Eve and got ourselves all tied up at 11.45pm when we had to light three Chinese lanterns to set off in the garden before the chimes rang out.

I love this new tradition of lantern lighting! There is something quite magical at the spectacle of dozens of miniature balloons drifting over the horizon and up over Prestatyn hillside in the cold December air
It is a sight that always (and  just almost) makes me cry!

Happy New Year.....lets all have a good one eh?

Much Love
Johnx

The Queen's list and toilet training

Now I will make no bones that I am a bit of a royalist.
I don't go to the lengths of some who collect cheap plates from the Sunday supplements which are embossed with tawdry photos of the Queen Mum, but I would wave my Union Jack with some pride if old Queeny drove past in her limo to visit William and  Kate, who actually now live down the coast a ways.

I enjoy  reading the Queen's New Year Honours list (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12090365) It's a bit like a "posh" Oscar ceremony where a dinnerlady from a comprehensive school in Barnsley can receive the same award and recognition as say the likes of Annie Lennox and God forbid even knackered old  Burt Kwouk  got something ( a fact that did throw me just a little)

Anyhow I was thinking about all this when out at dawn "toilet training".
Now my, cough...........cough...... "ablutions" are shall we say...firming up nicely...so I can concentrate on the knotty problem of Bulldog incontinence.
We are not winning the war against dollops of poo on the kitchen floor at the moment.
Constance has got the hang of leaving her cage and bed (good) but has not quite understood the finer points of elimination issues.
Every morning I take all four dogs out. And every morning when the terriers are sniffing and weeing and weeing and sniffing, Constance will find a bizarre interest in some inanimate object or other and will stand in a dreamy half consciousness type state, looking at it with her interested little piggy eyes..
This morning it was a metal sculpture of a bird sitting in the rockery of the garden which caught her attention, and as the rest of the dogs sat around like the bored yobs out of West Side Story Constance crept over to the bird grumbling quietly to herself and sat looking at it for an age!.
Now I have tried every trick in the book to divert her attention back to toilet  training...special toilet commands.....big praises when the smallest pee finally appears........I have even resorted to the odd quick pee myself (Thinking that a bit of roll play (and urine smell) may allow her to mirror my behaviour) but I have curtailed this potentially arrestable activity as I was nearly caught peeing against the hydrangea last night when neighbour Terry took his own dogs out for their final walk!
But I guess it is a case of teaching an old dog new tricks......
Like anything,it will all take some time.

So It is New Year's Eve!...Even though we are both not firing on all cylinders Chris and I are off to my sister Janet's house for drinks and nibbles tonight...I am not a fan of New Year's Eve celebrations

Shit day

How the mighty have fallen!
Yesterday I was bathed in glory after my unexpected "Internet" award.
Today I am having night sweats and what can only be described as "explosive bowels!"

I was wide awake well before dawn (I should have been asleep as I stayed up late to watch the "disaster movie" Black Rain)...so I dragged the dogs from their slumbers and took them for an early morning walk.
BAD IDEA!
As I reached the far lane, I felt some rather worrying and uncomfortable "grumblings" -down below...and then felt that awful uncontrollable gut lurch which signifies an immediate...and well shall we say uncontrollable....result?

The dogs all looked slightly confused,as desperately trying to control my growing hysteria I clenched my bum as tight as I could and minced all the way back to the cottage like an Olympic walker.......

sigh

Anyway an early morning visit to Salisbury's to buy loperimide and another "visit" to their very clean-I-must-say restrooms....and I was feeling a little more in control...........
When I got home, all Chris would say was
"It's those bloody birds!"
I got on with making his breakfast as he yelled again
"WASH YOUR HANDS!"
Hey ho

...and the envelope please!

I have just won the prestigious Laughing Horse Award for best Overall Blog 2010!

Thank you to the urbane, witty and educated judge Yorkshire Pudding for choosing my blog over a whole plethora of .interesting despot writings...........
He has a degree
so is a wise man!

In Memoriam

The following post...is a kind of "in memoriam" review of 2010!
In true Oscar style, I think there should be some moving yet uplifting music to accompany the words!
play this and read on!